• Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Links
  • Artwork
  • 2021 Exhibits
  • Art Archive
  • Blog
  • Everything Else
  Orlemann Art - the artwork of Valerie Orlemann

thoughts of a shy painter

Building Bridges

7/27/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
“...it is within our power to build a bridge to be crossed.   Even if my neighbor doesn’t understand my religion or my politics, he can understand my story.  If he can understand my story, then he is never too far from me. I can always build a bridge.”  -- Paul Coelho, introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of The Alchemist.

I have been reading books from PBS’s Great American Read," and Paul Coelho’s, “The Alchemist” is one of them .   I loved this quote from the introduction because I think it expresses the core of art-making—-connection with others.   It seems to me that all art seeks to communicate and build the kind of bridge Coelho describes--a bridge that can span theological, cultural and ideological differences and create a shared human place in which we can understand each other.  For an artist like me, painting landscapes, that means having another person feel the thrill I felt in the presence of beauty. A fairly small bridge! For someone like Shakespeare, it meant communicating the joy, pain and misunderstanding of young love, or the tragedy of betrayal.    Coelho says he builds bridges so that he will never be alone.    That might be why art is created.  


0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    I'm a painter.   I find joy in mimicking the world around me in oil paint.   Go figure.

    Archives

    August 2020
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    April 2016
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.